Why does one child's feelings (the one being bullied) matter more than the other child's feelings (the one punished by the state for "illegal bullying")?
Alan Greenspan and co pushed for deregulation in financial markets to the point that even/fraud/ was not investigated, since that would be an inefficiency.
Financial fraud is subjective (as it's used today), do you have any concrete examples that were so widespread they could have caused a financial crisis?
Alan Greenspan and co pushed for deregulation in financial markets to the point that even/fraud/ was not investigated, since that would be an inefficiency. "Let the market sort it out." Greenspan even got emergency legislation pushed through congress in order to prevent Brooksley Born [wikipedia.org] from carrying out her federal mandate in investigating fraud in derivative markets.
That was interesting to read about but...
It was *specifically* this policy that enabled the wide-spread fraud that almost brought down the entire world economy in 2008.
... that was maybe overstated. In the Wikipedia article you linked to:
Born declined to publicly comment on the unfolding 2008 crisis until March 2009, when she said: "The market grew so enormously, with so little oversight and regulation, that it made the financial crisis much deeper and more pervasive than it otherwise would have been."
So even she is saying the lack of regulation may have exacerbated the crisis but it certainly didn't enable the entire thing. You are ignoring major trends like offshoring, foreign wars, the price of oil and food, and changing values of homeownership (i.e. increased willingness to walk away from mortgages). Those contributed far more to the crisis than regulation or non-regulation.
Back in the days when a country went somewhere, planted a flag, and claimed the whole landmass it probably would have been worth it even if it didn't pay off for a few centuries. Now, with most foreign policy initiatives leaning towards the welfare and compassion angle, you're probably right.
Maybe not shelved, but cut? Money is an input to the development process. What you come up with will be different if you have $X versus 10 * $X, but you can still come up with stuff. One obvious thing that inflates NASA's manned space mission costs is safety. The thing is -- how safe does it really need to be? Would there still be plenty of volunteers if the risk of a mission was higher, but much cheaper? As long as they're open and honest about the risks it doesn't seem like a big deal.
Will people be able to pay the tax of a cheaper government brand or a different type of government altogether?
That would probably work. You'd have to break down the cost of things and charge for each one separately. The ones you don't pay, you don't get to use. If you drive a car, you pay a road tax. If you send your kids to public school, you pay a school tax. It wouldn't work for things like the defense budget. On the other hand, the defense budget ($680 billion) divided up among 112 million households works out to $116/week. The positive thing? You'll have a lot, lot, lot more support to trim the federal deficit when people are more in touch with what things cost and whether it's worth paying, so expect those costs to go down.
Hmm, because the whole point of dollars is that they are absolute, not relative?
What you're saying is that time is equally valuable for everyone, which is wrong. If I earn $0/hour watching TV, well, I'm still committing my time to it right? Maybe you pay 20% of your income for your house expenses. Can I have your house in exchange for a perpetual license to 20% of my future income from TV watching?
Honestly, my personal position on this matter is "tax the rich more", as they're afforded more benefits from society than any poor person will ever experience.
Rich people take less, spend more, and overall are a net positive on the economy. So you want to tax them more? Don't we want to *encourage* people to have positive effects on the economy?
Things like "saving for a down economy" are not deductible expenses, all that money gets taxed so it takes longer to save for any purpose. Of course our economy and government heavily encourages borrowing beyond your means and deducting the interest (wow look at that savings) so that may not be an important point to many people.
So with Apollo it was "Our priority is showing that we're better than Communists."
Now it's "Our priority is reaching out to Muslims."
Huge difference. The first one is self-centered. We're showing that we're better by doing something they can't do. We never said stuff like "Let's work with them and highlight what they're capable of and make them feel better and more included so they like us more." In fact that's the exact opposite.
) Cable companies would prefer to not provide cable to all people in a state, only providing cable to those who will buy premium services and in highest concentration areas so it's most profitable, but states general have laws stating "no, cable for everyone or you ain't in business." So the USPS should not provide mail service to absolutely everyone in the US?
I wonder when this nonsense started. We used to have the ability to make progress in an economically sensible and viable direction.
Imagine if New York hadn't been allowed to have paved roads until there was a plan in place to pave the entire Western frontier. No rail roads in California until Louisiana has a direct line to Idaho. No canal to the Great Lakes until the government builds a canal for North Carolina.
At some point we lost the idea that progress has to start somewhere. Now it's all or nothing which usually devolves to the nothing side of things.
I think there's some spillover from the Republican anti-teacher movement. They encourage parents to disrespect teachers, and that sometimes affects the attitude of their kids. I just read a story in Science about how conservatives (which is to say Republicans) are attacking science teachers and specifically geology teachers over their teaching of global warming.
I don't think that disagreeing with the teacher's agenda automatically means you're disrespecting them. And in any political topic, at that level (pre-college) the teacher should just stay out of it or really give balance to both sides. A big chunk of the population disagrees with the idea of man-caused global warming, so a relatively uneducated (compared to college-level professors or actual climate scientists) high school teacher teaching uneducated children about a contentious topic isn't real science or real education, it's partisanship.
It would be like if a biology teacher used only right-to-life literature when teaching about human sexuality. Hey the pictures are all true. Those are real aborted fetuses. It's science! But somehow I think pro-choice parents would have a big problem and it would end up in court (if the teacher weren't fired).
This country now has a conveyor belt into jail, where it costs at least $30,000 a year per prisoner. That's $1 million over 30 years.
With a 30 year jail term I'm assuming the kid goes to jail for murder or rape or something. The ridiculous cost of prison care is a separate issue. Really a death sentence is (er, again, *should be*) cheaper and probably more humane than 30 years in jail.
Yes, because kids who are skipping or otherwise don't care about school tend to listen to their parents. Yeah...
Good point, but in the situation where a kid doesn't care about his parents, doesn't care about his own education, and isn't afraid of immediate OR long-term consequences, well... he's better off just being kicked out of school. We'll save money, we'll save time, and as long as there's a re-entry mechanism for the kid when/if he matures (if it's short term, summer school, long term GED), to me that's good enough. You can't make it work for everybody.
I see two practical results: one, kids will simply *not* retake the class (which will lead to kids who are required to be at school, but not permitted to be in any classes)
You might be right, but the upshot is that the parents are taking on the financial burden of their child. He's not sitting in school soaking up $9500 of taxpayer money (far more if he has any learning problems) while a host of adults are desperately trying to contain or manage him. He's also not disrupting dozens of other kids who actually want to be there and learn.
which leads to result two: teachers will be told to ensure kids pass by simply writing "50%" on the final paperwork.
That would suck, and highlights how there needs to be an accountability system for teachers.
But the Republicans are responsible for the movement to destroy teachers' unions, fire teachers on the basis of invalid tests, and privatize the school system.
Yeah but what does that have to do with kids respecting teachers? Sorry I guess I misunderstood your original post if those were meant to be unrelated points.
The reason public schools are reluctant to kick kids out is that somebody is asking the question, "What happens to them after we kick them out?"
I'm more cynical about their motivations. It's really hard for someone to maintain their feeling of caring over a long period of time for a different set of people year in year out with no real evidence that you're having any impact. So even teachers/administrators who start off truly caring end up accepting the status quo and moving on to mundane concerns like funding. But maybe you're right.
It's a shame because this is a case where "caring" about one kid is having a severely adverse affect on 20 other kids in the class.
Shouldn't the implementation be in question, not the language as a whole? Javascript is usually interpreted, but I'm sure someone has written a Javascript compiler that emits executable machine code.
What? I wasn't aware that sending your child to a school was mandatory. Given the existence of homeschoolers and unschoolers, this does not seem to be the case.
As far as I know only the Amish have an exemption, and then only after 8th grade. Even homeschoolers are required to meet certain requirements and pass state tests. Private or religious schools also have to meet those requirements. So yeah you could homeschool your kid but they could still fail 7th grade. I'd say that should be excluded from the failure penalty though since the state didn't directly waste resources on your child, you just wasted your own time.
Where did that number come from?
"99% solution" is a figure of speech. I just meant it's not designed to fix 100% and there has to be a way to exercise judgment on special cases. We've been tending away from that in this country due to legal challenges over civil rights and discrimination and so on... but really I think a teacher needs to be able to say "In my opinion, this one kid, even though his x y and z objective measurements are the same as this other kid's, well he's a different case and needs to be treated differently."
But if they were to go through with this, I definitely think that they should cut out the non-essential classes (advanced math and such for starters) as not everybody needs those. Those aren't basic skills, and there's options to learn them later if someone changes their mind.
Actually, I said that I wasn't sure right in my comment. Of course, I doubt you are, either.
I'm asking for an honest guess, not a sound statistic. As in, do you think this would be a big problem, or one that can be dealt with out-of-band, like an exception system? Like the teacher saying "Yeah cheekyjohnson is absent a lot but he's a really good student, he passes."
And that wasn't the only "problem" I listed.
Rereading your posts, it's the only problem I see listed. Well, you also mentioned the monetary fine for having to retake failed classes, I saw that as a consequence of this absence thing, but I suppose it would apply for failing for any reason. Okay.
I don't understand why you think that would prevent people from finishing school. The parent pays the fine, kid goes back to school. If the parent doesn't pay, their wages are garnished, kid goes back to school. If the parent has no job, their welfare checks are garnished, kid goes back to school. If none of the above... exception. It's a 99% solution. Perfect is the enemy of the good and all that.
But I don't think making everything extremely strict and reforming the rules in a way that will likely increase the number of failures and the amount of disappointment in the current educational system will help the situation, to be honest.
Fair enough, it doesn't have to be extremely strict and in fact I was imagining a certain amount of leeway to begin with. Like if you get straight A's but miss a month of school... and still get straight A's... well obviously that's okay. That's not the kind of student we're addressing.
Increasing the failure rate is the best thing that could happen. Right now, a high school diploma is meaningless for the bottom 10% of students I'd say. They still lack basic skills. And furthermore, a big proportion of those who don't graduate should have been kicked out far earlier, and all that money saved.
To me, the solution isn't to try to get everybody to pass and fit into society's expectations, it's to change society's expectations. That bottom 10%... well let's create jobs that they can do without a diploma.
Yes jail time.. in the rare case that the parent really doesn't give a crap.
In reality it's a deterrent. So we're not talking about throwing millions of people in jail.
You have to weigh the cost of the isolated cases against the positive effect of making all the other kids more involved and more serious about doing well in life.
You're ignoring the reduced lunch period. But yeah, the total hours is probably going to be reduced. I get that, but you're ignoring the distribution of time and the overhead in task switching and all that stuff.
It's not obvious to me that 4 days of English at 1.2 hours per class is massively worse, overall, than 5 days of English at 1 hour per class. It depends on the individual student but for some it's going to be better to have more time to focus, once you've gotten in that mode, than having more days with less time per day.
You're right, in this case with a 1/2 hour difference there probably wouldn't be much opportunity to save money.
There are two things to take into account though. First, the extra 1/2 hour of work on those 4 days adds income in addition to reducing cost, so that might further balance out the deficit on the 5th day.
Second, you're looking at the total time and not paying attention to the distribution. The real cost savings are in the corner case where a babysitter is needed for 1/2 hour every day. In the new scheme the babysitter would only be needed once a week instead of five times a week. In reality, if you have someone like a nanny or home daycare, you don't get away with paying for a 1/2 hour chunk of time every single day. Coming out to your house 5 days a week and only being paid for 2.5 hours worth of actual sitting time? Not going to happen. One full day of babysitting could very well be cheaper than 5 partial days.
It would be more likely if the school day were extended by a full hour, rather than their plan of 1/2 hour plus reduced lunch. But hey, my point is just that it's more complicated than it seems at first.
I guess I didn't understand. In my school I only needed a doctor's note if I was out for more than X days in a row (I think it was 3). Definitely never needed a doctor's note for a cold.
In any case, OP's idea of a 90% cutoff would mean... well.. the average high school year is 180 days, for lower grades it's 197 days. So we're talking 18 to 20 days of school missed.
Be honest.. what proportion of kids who miss lots of schools fall into the narrow situation of: 1. They are legitimately absent through something like illness for more than 3 weeks during the school year (illnesses on vacations, winter, summer don't count) 2. They don't get any medical attention for these long-term illnesses 3. Their parents really do care about the situation, but just can't figure out how to get a note
To me it's vanishingly small and could be handled through simple communication from the parent to the school. In reality the people caught by this rule would be 1. Not legitimately absent 2. Parents are completely uninvolved and are apparently willing to pay the fine alluded to, rather than become involved 3. Kids are completely uninvolved and have no intrinsic motivation to pass or communicate what's going on to the school
Wow, you think Republicans are in any way responsible for kids not respecting teachers?
Hmm. My mom is a high school teacher in a bad school. The kids who don't show respect are, shall we say, probably not card carrying Republicans and neither are their parents. They don't give a rat's ass about politics and certainly don't watch the news regularly or read political blogs or stay informed.
Here's the real reason kids don't respect teachers, at least in those bad environments. There are no consequences. My mom's school is the last stop before the "school of last resort" (basically a prison) for her area. It's the one where kids go after they have been expelled from 2 or 3 other schools. But guess what. The administration reeeeeally does not want to kick out bad kids. I don't know why -- funding, NCLB, something.
So the gang member in one of my mom's class who disrupted almost period by swearing at her in Spanish over and over? Yeah, it took half the semester to get him kicked out. Had to wait until he brought a knife to school. Zero tolerance for weapons, infinite tolerance for everything else. Now what possible effect did her obvious lack of authority and power have on the other kids? Hmm.
And what's the consequence to the kid of being kicked out of yet another school? *This* time he regrets breaking all the rules? *This* time he realizes he could have had a shot at a better life if he turned away from criminal violence? What a joke.
You miss the twin problems of "the kid doesn't want to be there, so threatening to kick him out is a reward, not a punishment"
The punishment is the fee for the parents.
and "until a certain age, I am legally required to send my kid to school and you are legally required to teach them, so I'll pay that bill Half Past Never."
It's not just a bill that you can ignore, it's like if you don't pay your taxes. You end up with a lien on your house, your wages are garnished, or maybe you go to jail.
Most people also work longer than school hours (e.g. out at 2:00pm or 3:00pm? not likely) unless they're already part-time or work-at-home. So it's less of a problem than you're implying and may actually save the parents money. I mean if school gets out at 3:00pm and you need a babysitter for 1 hour until you get home 5 days a week, now you won't need a babysitter for 4 of those days. Even though there are more hours on the 5th day, you'll find that babysitters charge a base cost for the visit plus an hourly cost, especially if it's a regular arrangement. You could easily end up paying less.
but if it includes K-6, then two-income families are going to have to invest in putting their kids in some form of daycare one day a week so they can continue going to work
Hold on, what kind of K-6 school keeps the kids until 5:00pm or (more realistically with commute time) 6:00pm?
Either one parent is already part-time/stay-at-home or there's already daycare involved. Trimming an hour from 4 days a week (the school keeps them longer) may actually save money, especially for the part-time workers.
Slashdot Mirror
Why does one child's feelings (the one being bullied) matter more than the other child's feelings (the one punished by the state for "illegal bullying")?
Alan Greenspan and co pushed for deregulation in financial markets to the point that even /fraud/ was not investigated, since that would be an inefficiency.
Financial fraud is subjective (as it's used today), do you have any concrete examples that were so widespread they could have caused a financial crisis?
Alan Greenspan and co pushed for deregulation in financial markets to the point that even /fraud/ was not investigated, since that would be an inefficiency. "Let the market sort it out." Greenspan even got emergency legislation pushed through congress in order to prevent Brooksley Born [wikipedia.org] from carrying out her federal mandate in investigating fraud in derivative markets.
That was interesting to read about but...
It was *specifically* this policy that enabled the wide-spread fraud that almost brought down the entire world economy in 2008.
... that was maybe overstated. In the Wikipedia article you linked to:
Born declined to publicly comment on the unfolding 2008 crisis until March 2009, when she said: "The market grew so enormously, with so little oversight and regulation, that it made the financial crisis much deeper and more pervasive than it otherwise would have been."
So even she is saying the lack of regulation may have exacerbated the crisis but it certainly didn't enable the entire thing. You are ignoring major trends like offshoring, foreign wars, the price of oil and food, and changing values of homeownership (i.e. increased willingness to walk away from mortgages). Those contributed far more to the crisis than regulation or non-regulation.
Back in the days when a country went somewhere, planted a flag, and claimed the whole landmass it probably would have been worth it even if it didn't pay off for a few centuries. Now, with most foreign policy initiatives leaning towards the welfare and compassion angle, you're probably right.
Maybe not shelved, but cut? Money is an input to the development process. What you come up with will be different if you have $X versus 10 * $X, but you can still come up with stuff. One obvious thing that inflates NASA's manned space mission costs is safety. The thing is -- how safe does it really need to be? Would there still be plenty of volunteers if the risk of a mission was higher, but much cheaper? As long as they're open and honest about the risks it doesn't seem like a big deal.
Will people be able to pay the tax of a cheaper government brand or a different type of government altogether?
That would probably work. You'd have to break down the cost of things and charge for each one separately. The ones you don't pay, you don't get to use. If you drive a car, you pay a road tax. If you send your kids to public school, you pay a school tax. It wouldn't work for things like the defense budget. On the other hand, the defense budget ($680 billion) divided up among 112 million households works out to $116/week. The positive thing? You'll have a lot, lot, lot more support to trim the federal deficit when people are more in touch with what things cost and whether it's worth paying, so expect those costs to go down.
Hmm, because the whole point of dollars is that they are absolute, not relative?
What you're saying is that time is equally valuable for everyone, which is wrong. If I earn $0/hour watching TV, well, I'm still committing my time to it right? Maybe you pay 20% of your income for your house expenses. Can I have your house in exchange for a perpetual license to 20% of my future income from TV watching?
Honestly, my personal position on this matter is "tax the rich more", as they're afforded more benefits from society than any poor person will ever experience.
Rich people take less, spend more, and overall are a net positive on the economy. So you want to tax them more? Don't we want to *encourage* people to have positive effects on the economy?
Things like "saving for a down economy" are not deductible expenses, all that money gets taxed so it takes longer to save for any purpose. Of course our economy and government heavily encourages borrowing beyond your means and deducting the interest (wow look at that savings) so that may not be an important point to many people.
So with Apollo it was "Our priority is showing that we're better than Communists."
Now it's "Our priority is reaching out to Muslims."
Huge difference. The first one is self-centered. We're showing that we're better by doing something they can't do. We never said stuff like "Let's work with them and highlight what they're capable of and make them feel better and more included so they like us more." In fact that's the exact opposite.
) Cable companies would prefer to not provide cable to all people in a state, only providing cable to those who will buy premium services and in highest concentration areas so it's most profitable, but states general have laws stating "no, cable for everyone or you ain't in business." So the USPS should not provide mail service to absolutely everyone in the US?
I wonder when this nonsense started. We used to have the ability to make progress in an economically sensible and viable direction.
Imagine if New York hadn't been allowed to have paved roads until there was a plan in place to pave the entire Western frontier. No rail roads in California until Louisiana has a direct line to Idaho. No canal to the Great Lakes until the government builds a canal for North Carolina.
At some point we lost the idea that progress has to start somewhere. Now it's all or nothing which usually devolves to the nothing side of things.
I think there's some spillover from the Republican anti-teacher movement. They encourage parents to disrespect teachers, and that sometimes affects the attitude of their kids. I just read a story in Science about how conservatives (which is to say Republicans) are attacking science teachers and specifically geology teachers over their teaching of global warming.
I don't think that disagreeing with the teacher's agenda automatically means you're disrespecting them. And in any political topic, at that level (pre-college) the teacher should just stay out of it or really give balance to both sides. A big chunk of the population disagrees with the idea of man-caused global warming, so a relatively uneducated (compared to college-level professors or actual climate scientists) high school teacher teaching uneducated children about a contentious topic isn't real science or real education, it's partisanship.
It would be like if a biology teacher used only right-to-life literature when teaching about human sexuality. Hey the pictures are all true. Those are real aborted fetuses. It's science! But somehow I think pro-choice parents would have a big problem and it would end up in court (if the teacher weren't fired).
This country now has a conveyor belt into jail, where it costs at least $30,000 a year per prisoner. That's $1 million over 30 years.
With a 30 year jail term I'm assuming the kid goes to jail for murder or rape or something. The ridiculous cost of prison care is a separate issue. Really a death sentence is (er, again, *should be*) cheaper and probably more humane than 30 years in jail.
Yes, because kids who are skipping or otherwise don't care about school tend to listen to their parents. Yeah...
Good point, but in the situation where a kid doesn't care about his parents, doesn't care about his own education, and isn't afraid of immediate OR long-term consequences, well... he's better off just being kicked out of school. We'll save money, we'll save time, and as long as there's a re-entry mechanism for the kid when/if he matures (if it's short term, summer school, long term GED), to me that's good enough. You can't make it work for everybody.
I see two practical results: one, kids will simply *not* retake the class (which will lead to kids who are required to be at school, but not permitted to be in any classes)
You might be right, but the upshot is that the parents are taking on the financial burden of their child. He's not sitting in school soaking up $9500 of taxpayer money (far more if he has any learning problems) while a host of adults are desperately trying to contain or manage him. He's also not disrupting dozens of other kids who actually want to be there and learn.
which leads to result two: teachers will be told to ensure kids pass by simply writing "50%" on the final paperwork.
That would suck, and highlights how there needs to be an accountability system for teachers.
But the Republicans are responsible for the movement to destroy teachers' unions, fire teachers on the basis of invalid tests, and privatize the school system.
Yeah but what does that have to do with kids respecting teachers? Sorry I guess I misunderstood your original post if those were meant to be unrelated points.
The reason public schools are reluctant to kick kids out is that somebody is asking the question, "What happens to them after we kick them out?"
I'm more cynical about their motivations. It's really hard for someone to maintain their feeling of caring over a long period of time for a different set of people year in year out with no real evidence that you're having any impact. So even teachers/administrators who start off truly caring end up accepting the status quo and moving on to mundane concerns like funding. But maybe you're right.
It's a shame because this is a case where "caring" about one kid is having a severely adverse affect on 20 other kids in the class.
Shouldn't the implementation be in question, not the language as a whole? Javascript is usually interpreted, but I'm sure someone has written a Javascript compiler that emits executable machine code.
What? I wasn't aware that sending your child to a school was mandatory. Given the existence of homeschoolers and unschoolers, this does not seem to be the case.
As far as I know only the Amish have an exemption, and then only after 8th grade. Even homeschoolers are required to meet certain requirements and pass state tests. Private or religious schools also have to meet those requirements. So yeah you could homeschool your kid but they could still fail 7th grade. I'd say that should be excluded from the failure penalty though since the state didn't directly waste resources on your child, you just wasted your own time.
Where did that number come from?
"99% solution" is a figure of speech. I just meant it's not designed to fix 100% and there has to be a way to exercise judgment on special cases. We've been tending away from that in this country due to legal challenges over civil rights and discrimination and so on... but really I think a teacher needs to be able to say "In my opinion, this one kid, even though his x y and z objective measurements are the same as this other kid's, well he's a different case and needs to be treated differently."
But if they were to go through with this, I definitely think that they should cut out the non-essential classes (advanced math and such for starters) as not everybody needs those. Those aren't basic skills, and there's options to learn them later if someone changes their mind.
That's a great idea actually.
Actually, I said that I wasn't sure right in my comment. Of course, I doubt you are, either.
I'm asking for an honest guess, not a sound statistic. As in, do you think this would be a big problem, or one that can be dealt with out-of-band, like an exception system? Like the teacher saying "Yeah cheekyjohnson is absent a lot but he's a really good student, he passes."
And that wasn't the only "problem" I listed.
Rereading your posts, it's the only problem I see listed. Well, you also mentioned the monetary fine for having to retake failed classes, I saw that as a consequence of this absence thing, but I suppose it would apply for failing for any reason. Okay.
I don't understand why you think that would prevent people from finishing school. The parent pays the fine, kid goes back to school. If the parent doesn't pay, their wages are garnished, kid goes back to school. If the parent has no job, their welfare checks are garnished, kid goes back to school. If none of the above... exception. It's a 99% solution. Perfect is the enemy of the good and all that.
But I don't think making everything extremely strict and reforming the rules in a way that will likely increase the number of failures and the amount of disappointment in the current educational system will help the situation, to be honest.
Fair enough, it doesn't have to be extremely strict and in fact I was imagining a certain amount of leeway to begin with. Like if you get straight A's but miss a month of school... and still get straight A's... well obviously that's okay. That's not the kind of student we're addressing.
Increasing the failure rate is the best thing that could happen. Right now, a high school diploma is meaningless for the bottom 10% of students I'd say. They still lack basic skills. And furthermore, a big proportion of those who don't graduate should have been kicked out far earlier, and all that money saved.
To me, the solution isn't to try to get everybody to pass and fit into society's expectations, it's to change society's expectations. That bottom 10%... well let's create jobs that they can do without a diploma.
Yes jail time.. in the rare case that the parent really doesn't give a crap.
In reality it's a deterrent. So we're not talking about throwing millions of people in jail.
You have to weigh the cost of the isolated cases against the positive effect of making all the other kids more involved and more serious about doing well in life.
You're ignoring the reduced lunch period. But yeah, the total hours is probably going to be reduced. I get that, but you're ignoring the distribution of time and the overhead in task switching and all that stuff.
It's not obvious to me that 4 days of English at 1.2 hours per class is massively worse, overall, than 5 days of English at 1 hour per class. It depends on the individual student but for some it's going to be better to have more time to focus, once you've gotten in that mode, than having more days with less time per day.
You're right, in this case with a 1/2 hour difference there probably wouldn't be much opportunity to save money.
There are two things to take into account though. First, the extra 1/2 hour of work on those 4 days adds income in addition to reducing cost, so that might further balance out the deficit on the 5th day.
Second, you're looking at the total time and not paying attention to the distribution. The real cost savings are in the corner case where a babysitter is needed for 1/2 hour every day. In the new scheme the babysitter would only be needed once a week instead of five times a week. In reality, if you have someone like a nanny or home daycare, you don't get away with paying for a 1/2 hour chunk of time every single day. Coming out to your house 5 days a week and only being paid for 2.5 hours worth of actual sitting time? Not going to happen. One full day of babysitting could very well be cheaper than 5 partial days.
It would be more likely if the school day were extended by a full hour, rather than their plan of 1/2 hour plus reduced lunch. But hey, my point is just that it's more complicated than it seems at first.
I guess I didn't understand. In my school I only needed a doctor's note if I was out for more than X days in a row (I think it was 3). Definitely never needed a doctor's note for a cold.
In any case, OP's idea of a 90% cutoff would mean... well.. the average high school year is 180 days, for lower grades it's 197 days. So we're talking 18 to 20 days of school missed.
Be honest.. what proportion of kids who miss lots of schools fall into the narrow situation of:
1. They are legitimately absent through something like illness for more than 3 weeks during the school year (illnesses on vacations, winter, summer don't count)
2. They don't get any medical attention for these long-term illnesses
3. Their parents really do care about the situation, but just can't figure out how to get a note
To me it's vanishingly small and could be handled through simple communication from the parent to the school. In reality the people caught by this rule would be
1. Not legitimately absent
2. Parents are completely uninvolved and are apparently willing to pay the fine alluded to, rather than become involved
3. Kids are completely uninvolved and have no intrinsic motivation to pass or communicate what's going on to the school
So pretty much people who would fail anyways.
Wow, you think Republicans are in any way responsible for kids not respecting teachers?
Hmm. My mom is a high school teacher in a bad school. The kids who don't show respect are, shall we say, probably not card carrying Republicans and neither are their parents. They don't give a rat's ass about politics and certainly don't watch the news regularly or read political blogs or stay informed.
Here's the real reason kids don't respect teachers, at least in those bad environments. There are no consequences. My mom's school is the last stop before the "school of last resort" (basically a prison) for her area. It's the one where kids go after they have been expelled from 2 or 3 other schools. But guess what. The administration reeeeeally does not want to kick out bad kids. I don't know why -- funding, NCLB, something.
So the gang member in one of my mom's class who disrupted almost period by swearing at her in Spanish over and over? Yeah, it took half the semester to get him kicked out. Had to wait until he brought a knife to school. Zero tolerance for weapons, infinite tolerance for everything else. Now what possible effect did her obvious lack of authority and power have on the other kids? Hmm.
And what's the consequence to the kid of being kicked out of yet another school? *This* time he regrets breaking all the rules? *This* time he realizes he could have had a shot at a better life if he turned away from criminal violence? What a joke.
I think it's pretty obvious that excused absences could be treated differently from skipping school.
You miss the twin problems of "the kid doesn't want to be there, so threatening to kick him out is a reward, not a punishment"
The punishment is the fee for the parents.
and "until a certain age, I am legally required to send my kid to school and you are legally required to teach them, so I'll pay that bill Half Past Never."
It's not just a bill that you can ignore, it's like if you don't pay your taxes. You end up with a lien on your house, your wages are garnished, or maybe you go to jail.
Most people also work longer than school hours (e.g. out at 2:00pm or 3:00pm? not likely) unless they're already part-time or work-at-home. So it's less of a problem than you're implying and may actually save the parents money. I mean if school gets out at 3:00pm and you need a babysitter for 1 hour until you get home 5 days a week, now you won't need a babysitter for 4 of those days. Even though there are more hours on the 5th day, you'll find that babysitters charge a base cost for the visit plus an hourly cost, especially if it's a regular arrangement. You could easily end up paying less.
but if it includes K-6, then two-income families are going to have to invest in putting their kids in some form of daycare one day a week so they can continue going to work
Hold on, what kind of K-6 school keeps the kids until 5:00pm or (more realistically with commute time) 6:00pm?
Either one parent is already part-time/stay-at-home or there's already daycare involved. Trimming an hour from 4 days a week (the school keeps them longer) may actually save money, especially for the part-time workers.